D&D 5E Magic Items, and what it says about the editions

[WarpedAcorn]

I will admit, I am still unsure of how to treat magic items in 5E. In the game I am currently running I have been very liberal about giving out magic items. In fact I have been handing out 1-2 (hand picked items, not rolling) per adventure including some rare items that I think help fill in some potential holes the party might have. However, I have not given out any magic armor yet and only one magic weapon, a +1 Dagger.

This has been interesting because most of the monsters I have been using, especially lately, have resistance. I haven't targeted monsters with resistances, it just has worked out that way. Now that my players are 5th level, I'm toying with the idea of giving them access to +1 weapons across the board via a social connection to an Enchanter who they can employ (although I would still use the magic item creation timetable). But I also don't want to trivialize the monsters.


I guess my thoughts are, to me, 5th Edition is the most confusing on the status of magic items. My very first D&D game was one in which my character, a Thief, got a magic dagger that could turn into a spear. I remember not being confused about magic items in 2nd edition, and I recall 3rd edition being the clearest on magic items. In fact my only complaint is that 3rd edition removed the "Magic" from magic items to the point they were just normal part of play and upgrade.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I know there are monsters who have resistance in 5e, but I would caution treating them like monsters with immunity in other editions and feeling like you need to make sure the PCs have magic weapons. Why? Because if the monster has immunity and the party has no magic weapons, that monsters will stick around forever and eventually kill the party. Therefore, a magic weapon is needed. A monster with resistance, on the other hand, can still be injured. It just has twice the staying power as a normal monster against PCs without magic weapons. So I would advise to first look at those resistant monsters and see if that resistance is figured into their CR already.

For example, if you have two CR 4 monsters, one resistant to non magic weapons, and the other is not. The first has 44 hp, but the 2nd has 75 hp, everything else being equal. I would not feel pressured to give the party magic weapons against the first, because even with normal weapons, it's still going to be dropped about as fast as the second monster. So in my experience, you should not feel like the party should have magic weapons to keep up with the monsters, because it's already baked in with the total CR anyway. And if you give out magic weapons freely, it will trivialize most other encounters, making them seem too easy. And I think it's safe to say many of us have had that experience (a balanced encounter being a lot easier than it should be).

 

[Helldritch]

But, good adventure design also says "don't assume that the PCs will find all the treasure." They're allowed to miss treasure through their own mistakes or inaction, or just because they took a different path. If the adventure has 3x as much treasure as you actually expect them to find, that actually means it has just the right amount of treasure to support free play.

Of course they usualy won't find everything . But those "modules" were already assuming a fairly thorough exploration. Again, judgement and knowledge of your players will prevail in any guidelines. My players tend to strip down a dungeon of everything, even the walls if needed. That is why I'm using my own guidelines. Yet if your players are not the strip down type. Then a wee bit more permanent magical items might be in order.

 

[devincutler]

My quick impression f reading through STK is that WOTC has decided to ramp up the level of magic items considerably in 5e. Having read LMoP, HotDQ, RoT, CoS, OOTA, and STK I'd say STK gives out more magic in the first 5 levels than HotDQ and RoT combined.

 

[Shiroiken]

The thing I hated most about magic items in TSR days was how the novels always broke the rules. I remember a Forgotten Realms novel where some Verbeeg wore his Ring of Regeneration on his toe to avoid detection, and how I wanted to scream at the author, "It explicitly doesn't work that way, for a good reason!"

As far as I can determine, some of the authors for D&D novels never actually played the game. Rose Estes, for example, not only had little knowledge of Greyhawk (the setting she wrote about), but had no problems with Gold Dragons working with evil Dragons to destroy humanity. Because Reasons.

Others knew the rules, and either ignored them for story purposes or incorporated their houserules into the game. Ed Greenwood, for example, never allowed mechanics to interfere with a good story (in a novel or his game). I could give examples, but most people already know what I'm talking about and there are too many to chose from.

The only author I know tried to follow the rules in his novels as closely as possible was RA Salvatore. Even he bent the rules in his Cleric Quintet, as Cadderly (the protagonist) had access to Drow Hand Crossbows and Oil of Impact, plus a flashlight (yea, it was magically explained, but seriously?!?). It stretches credibility that this monastic priest would have access to all of this. Of course, by comparison, this was still better than most other authors for following the rules.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The only author I know tried to follow the rules in his novels as closely as possible was RA Salvatore. Even he bent the rules in his Cleric Quintet, as Cadderly (the protagonist) had access to Drow Hand Crossbows and Oil of Impact, plus a flashlight (yea, it was magically explained, but seriously?!?). It stretches credibility that this monastic priest would have access to all of this. Of course, by comparison, this was still better than most other authors for following the rules.

Shiroiken wins the banana! The rule-breaking author I was referring to was in fact RA Salvatore, in the Cleric Quintet. So, good catch.

 

[Savage Wombat]

My players feel the loss of random magical treasure in 5e. So for my next campaign I'm designing the world around magic treasure - and the PCs will discover a mysterious book that acts as their shopping list - this magic item is in this dungeon here. (It's more complicated than that, of course.)

I plan to limit the available items to those that require attunement - I think it might be interesting to see a group decide from week to week which three items they'll need.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Yes, you can give a bunch of monsters full weapon immunity that requires +2 weapons to hit AND spell immunity to spells below 5th level--but you shouldn't, IMO. It's too far outside the 5E idiom and breaks too many design assumptions. At that point you should just admit to yourself that you'd rather be playing a different game.

Well, yes and no. It's simple to do as a DM, and it's not going to break anything that's not supposed to break (it will break for low-level PCs without magic weapons, of course, but that's the point). It's not part of official 5E design philosophy, but 5E can easily accommodate it. I wouldn't call it a "play a different game" scenario -- it's not like, I dunno, trying to implement a classless modular character system or something.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm a long time AD&D player, playing it from 1981 to 2012, skipping 3e (for the most part) and 4e completely before 5e came out. Each edition that I've played, seems to have a focus on magic items that reinforces a certain playstyle beneficial to that edition's design.

Well, each edition has a different take on magic items. I'm not sure each focus intentionally re-inforces a particular style, nor that the influence they have on the metagame is always beneficial, probably the contrary in some cases.

In AD&D (and b/x), magic items are everywhere. And the overwhelming majority of them are +1 weapons, potions of healing, and items that grant invisibility.

It certainly depended on the DM. Using the modules as a touchstone or rolling on random treasure tables would get you a lot of magic weapons and potions, which would tend to help out the non-casting classes, and the 1e DMG did imply that the tables were intentionally weighted that way. But there were the notorious 'Monty Haul' DMs and, less notoriously, stingy ones.

That seems to reinforce three things that are very important in TSR D&D: PCs are fragile compared to later editions and need healing (since natural healing is pretty much non existent unless you want to hole up at the Hyatt for a couple weeks)

That re-enforces the traditional need for a Cleric a lot more than it is re-enforced by the frequency of healing potions on the random treasure tables.

with my limited time playing 3e (only about 50 sessions or so), it seems that edition is designed around magic items being required, and weapons turned up to 11. What I mean by that is a ton of magic weapons not only gave bonuses, but they all seemed to have additional elemental damage added as well. Combat seemed to resemble a fireworks show, with everyone having a weapon that added acid, fire, cold, or lightning damage lol. That seems to reinforce 3e's design of sharply increased numbers bloat and magic item dependence

That is a limitted overview. Magic weapons were horribly expensive for what they did, and those who used them mostly dependent upon the DM to just place them somewhere. PCs making scrolls and wands and the like were a huge impact, and cheap Wand-based healing pushed 3e towards an encounter-paced style in which PCs could enter most fights at full hps, without their Cleric or Druid (zilla) expending a lot (or even any) spells on healing.

Now 5e? That turned everything around.

It really did, magic items are back to being a DM-driven resources, even a plot resource, as they were in the TSR era, the make/buy and wealth/level started with 3.0 (and continued in 4e). It also went back to items being able to do things PCs couldn't do any other way, and to items making PCs wildly more powerful (or, at least, "just better" as Mike Mearls has put it many times). Maybe not to the extreme of AD&D, but still a significant step back away from 3.5 make/buy rules that reduced magic items to mostly 'just' duplicating things PC casters could do (though of course, casters could do a lot), let alone the 4e made magic items (though an expected part of leveling) a relatively minor part of PC power/development....

I think it's the least magic item dependent edition. They come right out and say the design goal was to make magical items optional, and with bounded accuracy, including magical weapons or armor from 3e would create all kinds of havoc.

There are still challenges you can't expect to take on without magic, but PC magic is almost ubiquitous in the form of casting and other class features, with only a handful of sub-classes dependent on magic items to make up the difference. Not only do more PC options include casting, casting is more flexible and less likely to lead to 'wasted' slots filled with a spell that doesn't come up, or used ineffectively. So magic items are far less necessary/more optional than in any other edition you've had experience with, though their pressence/absence will tend to be higher impact than in 4e, where magic items were assumed, but their absence in favor of inherent bonuses wasn't much of a game-changer, because items just weren't that significant a source of PC power.

But, aside from that, yes, 5e has less pressure to place magic items, so the DM is free to use them only as his setting or story or other needs of the game suggest. It still, as in 1e, might be a good idea to place an item or few that particularly help the non-casters in your party - that is, if you even have any.

Anyway, just an observation, and when converting TSR modules to 5e, I'm finding I'm eliminating most of the items.

Agreed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As far as I can see, the main difference between AD&D and 5E in terms of magic item prevalence (outside of modules, which don't count because they aren't rules text) is the way AD&D requires +1 (or +2, or +5) weapons to hit so many monsters, whereas 5E just makes it half damage (with lots of free cantrips to bypass weapon immunity entirely). I'm honestly on the fence about whether the change improves the game or not. In 5E, you really can't use monsters with weapon immunities as a "you must be this tall to ride" sign, and you can get by with nothing but spellcasters in a party. Is that a good thing or not?

IMO, absolutely.

For one, playing whatever character you want makes the game a better game of make-believe and storytelling. It's very empowering for a player. You get to pick what you want to be. No required classes, no necessary roles, no arbitrary lock-and-key situations (where they key for the lock is "picked the right character class."). You can be whatever you want to be. So game design moving in that direction is better.

For two, fewer "you must be magic to affect it" monsters means that you can get away with fewer magical weapons in the game, which lessens the burden on the DM. The random distribution also creates interesting differences between players in the fight itself. "I expect you to be able to fight this thing" is important to be able to say about a large number of things, at all levels.